Tall Buildings Construction Durations

Hi David,

Some interesting facts, which leads to some interesting points, those guys never had computors, or planners in todays sense, but they managed to achieve these feats of construction! These are but a few of the great construction achievements you have mentioned, I think it explains something about planning, that most planners do not realise, what they are doing is nothing new, and with all the modern technology, their success rate is not so good. There is a lot of lessons to be learnt in reading history.



I was watching a show on the "History Channel" and it was called "The Kings from Babylon to Baghdad" and what was interesting, was the number of times Babylon was Razed and rebuilt, most times in record times. It makes you realise that if you focus on the matter at hand, nothing is impossible, in the concept of this discussion "timewise".



The problem is that a lot of people in the industry, do not see it in this way, and instead of focussing on completing the job at hand, try and work out how they can make a fast buck with a claim.



I am glad you mentionened Monsieur Eiffel, as he is one of the greatest structural engineers of all times, however, the eiffel tower was one of his minor achiements, look at some of his bridges. He was hundreds of years ahead of his time, imagine if he had a computor.



Regards



PS as a matter of interest do you know about the Ziggurats, these were some of the first tall buildings ever built. The technology was very simular to modern methods of re-inforcement , but they used clay with straw as re-inforcing and there is still some remains of some of these in the middle east. There was an interesting paper on the subject delivered at The International Conference on Geosynthetics held in Vienna in 1985.

I like the idea of researching tall buildings because they are generally so inspirational and part of the wonder of them is how tlong they take to build. Whilst Philip has laid down the basic parameters that apply to most/all buildings the time it takes to construct tall buildings is often outside our usual parameters.



I have a newspaper cutting on my desk that includes the interesting fact that the pyramids in Giza (about 30 years to build) held the record for being the tallest buildings (143.5m) for the greatest length of time; from about 2500 BC to AD1889 when the Eiffel Tower (324m) was completed (2 years, 2 months, 5 days to complete).



The Eiffel tower held the record up until 1931 and the Empire State Building (449m). The Empire State Building was built in an incredible 1 year and 45 days, the speed of erection no doubt being influenced by the availability of labour following the depression but also the recent introduction of scientific management and planning tools from the likes of Frank Winslow Taylor, Henry Ganntt and Frank Gilbreth.



The current tallest building (ignoring various communication towers) is Taipei 101(508m), completed in 2004 taking 5 years to construct.



Here endeth the lesson… any errors freely admitted!



Regards



David



ps. On the Emporis site, if all the data is there, for specific buildings it does list the start and end of construction

pps. Almost forgot, this is my favourite tall buildings website: http://www.skyscraperpage.com/

Gary,



On the site for a number of buildings (Swiss Re, BP3 etc) there are month by month phototgraphs showing the progress of construction. Surely these would assist in interpolating durations ?.



HTH

Thanks Gary was just wondering. The answers to the questions on this subject cannot be definitive, as circumstances vary, from place to place, and dependant on the type of activity involved on the skills available. An interesting point about tall buildings, is that there are three main aspects, Structural completion, Building services, and Finishes. The interest part is that normally the first two is not such a major problem, however finishes is. The first two can work bottom up, however finishes is preferably done top down. The reason being is that you do not want people with dirty hands wandering through finished sections.This is life, and when you plan you have to take all these factors into account.

An example is, how do multi-storey structures get designed. Firstly the architect has a go at it and draws a pretty picture. Then the structural engineer has to decipher the picture and work out the loadings, and he works top down, when he has had his go, the geotechnical engineer has his go, as he now has the foundation loadings. Then the building services guys have a go and find a few problems of how to lay on the services, and the job goes back through the loop, starting with the architects.

Finally when they have made up their minds, some poor contractor starts the hole in the ground, and finds different soil conditions from what the geotechnical engineers found, So all of a sudden you need piling. And so on.

Finaly the structure is going up, and all is well for the time being, hut then the building services guys start, and thsy have their problems. Like trying to get servives somewhere and then having to drill holes through beams to be able to get the services in, and the problem is back in the structural designers hands.

Finally all is going well and the finishing guys climb in, and then the circle is closed, back comes the architects, with their pretty pictures and stuff it all up.

This might sound a bit pessimistic, but it is actually a positive view, that is why I still risk my life in live petrochemical plants, rather than dealing with architects, and the like.

I agree with Gary that learning is a continuous process and it should be available to all. Continuous learning brings people towards perfection. So asking questions / suggestions does not show that the person does not know the thing but in this way he might improve the things which he already know.

Hi Gary,



As the founding member of an association, that is supposed to judge people by their skills, I have a problem. Why do you stil ask questions, and want to charge people money to join your organisation?

Dear Steven,



The site is found to be a useful one, I have re-adjusted your link .



Cheers!!!



Daya

Gary,



Have you looked at www.skyscrapers.com , loads of data on there.